If you've read Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula," you already know about what happened on the Demeter, the doomed ship that carried 50 boxes of Transylvanian earth--and Count Dracula--to England. The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision Blog reports that Phoenix Pictures is developing a movie about the voyage, and vampire veteran David Slade is in talks to take the helm. Slade has already taken on the undead in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" and the far less romantic "30 Days of Night."
Although Heat Vision says the lead, presumably Dracula, is not yet cast, Ben Kingsley and the wonderful Noomi Rapace ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo") are attached to co-star. Rapace is likely to become a fanboy favorite. She also has a featured role in "Sherlock Holmes II" and is also signed to star in Ridley Scott's sci-fi vehicle "Prometheus," which isn't actually an "Alien" prequel but has "Alien DNA," whatever that means.
This project has been around for awhile. The screenplay by Bragi Schut was written about ten years ago. However, long gestation periods are not unusual for Phoenix, which took nearly that long to get it's Oscar-nominated "Black Swan" on the screen.
The last voyage of the Demeter is one of the scariest parts of Stoker's classic novel, strangely short-shrifted or completely ignored in most film adaptations, other than F.W. Murnau's silent "Nosferatu." The omission is hard to undertand. This part of the story has the potential to be "Alien" on the high seas. The project is still securing financing, although that should come easier with Slade on board. "Eclipse" has taken in nearly $700 million worldwide to date, and in Hollywood, nothing attracts money like money.
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